Among the most sensitive areas of electronic equipment to the effects of electrostatic discharge are the interconnecting cables and their respective terminations which are used between the pieces of electronic equipment.
These cables effectively act as receiving antennae to the broadband noise generated by an electrostatic arc and they then conduct this received signal, which is a disturbing influence, into the equipment circuitry. This introduction of these unwanted signals into the equipment is accomplished in spite of any shielding provided around the equipment consoles themselves. Such signals provide a disruptive effect on sensitive logic circuitry.
In the past, the most effective way to overcome the introduction of these signals has been to shield the offending cables with a suitable metallic envelope. This envelope was then electrically connected to the respective shields of the equipment at both ends of the cable.
This extended the shielding effect which existed around the pieces of electronic equipment, to the cables. Thus, a Gaussian shield or surface was created into which no outside electromagnetic radiation can penetrate so long as the shield was continuous.
With today's increasing usage of flat ribbon cable, plastic bodied connectors, which connectors can be "mass-terminated" to such cable, and non-metallic equipment enclosures, the problem of effective shielding against electrostatic discharge has risen anew. While there are various commercial ways of treating the non-metallic enclosures to provide an effective shield having metallic characteristics, heretofore, no known commercial way of shielding the "mass-terminated" flat ribbon cable existed.